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Vox Machinae has been out since late September, and while I feel it’s one of the most innovative games I’ve played on my Oculus Rift this year, what truly stands out is its beefy guns and gargantuan mechs — also known as “grinders” according to the developers at Space Bullet.

The game itself uses limited descriptions to explain what each mech class does, which boils down to tooltips such as “mid-light class with decent speed” or the like. When I first played the game, I certainly wish I had more context to go off of than that. Granted, it’s not hard to jump in and mess around until you know what each weapon does and how each mech handles. But that’s work you shouldn’t have to do. Instead, you should reference back to this guide.

Below, I’ve listed out detailed descriptions and advice on how to use each of the weapons and each of the mech classes in the game. There are even some exclusive tips directly from Space Bullet developer Josh Enes, who was kind enough to chat with me.

Catalyst Class

Catalyst is the game’s default class, and is appropriately heavy, but still is not as heavy as the Dredge. It’s nicely balanced with a small weapon slot, a large weapon slot, and an embedded 8x missile launcher.

Enes: “It is the default, and intended as the thing that starts you off in Vox Machinae. The default loadout is lasers and missiles that are pretty easy to use, and it has a bonus to cooling to help new players who tend to overheat a lot. You can think of Catalyst as your standard infantry. It can fill any role, but the others have specializations that make them better or worse at certain tasks. The missile slot is fixed, but the rest of the loadout can be configured to the player’s taste and there aren’t really any wrong choices here.”

Drill Class

The Drill class mech looks like a tall metal spider with four legs, but it can run quickly, regain fuel quickly, and has more maneuverability than any other mech class. This is the one you’d use as a light scout to get around the map without a hassle, but it comes with some added punch in the form of a built-in drill at the bottom of its chassis. It’s armed with a single large weapon slot as well, which I like equipping with the default railgun for range.

Success in close quarters is very much a matter of using your jump thruster to quickly get above other mechs and drop down on them. But since the Drill is much lighter on armor than the other mech classes, I wouldn’t recommend going into close-quarters combat, at all, unless you find yourself scraping the barrel for options. That said, the railgun is easily the best large weapon for a Drill; you can get in and out of safe vantage points pretty effortlessly, pick opponents off from a distance, and then evade (or, alternatively, drill) opponents that get

This year’s festival in London showcased a bold range of pioneering VR content. Here are some of our favorites. Raindance is a well-established and highly-respected independent film festival, but it isn’t a particularly flashy one. However, that lack of over-the-top glamour actually suits the event very well. There’s a certain tongue-in-cheek, down-to-earth British vibe present

Pimax today opened up preorders for its upcoming wide field of view PC VR headsets.

The Pimax “5K Plus” can be preordered for $699, the Pimax “8K” is $799, and the OLED Pimax “5K BE” (Business Edition) is $999. Note these prices are for the headset only. While Pimax plans to offer its own controllers and base stations some time in 2019, the preorder and launch are just the headsets. Because the Pimax headsets use SteamVR “Lighthouse” tracking, current HTC Vive owners should be able to simply swap their current headset out and use their existing HTC base stations and controllers. Those who don’t already own a HTC Vive, however, would need to purchase a pair of controllers and base stations from HTC. That’s an added cost of around $530, bringing the total price of a Pimax “5K Plus” with headset and controllers to just over $1200.

Keep in mind, though, this total price will likely be significantly lower if or when Pimax offers its own complete set. Pimax is also offering an option to add Leap Motion finger-tracking for any of the three headsets for $169 extra, as well as bundles with the RTX 2080 line of NIVIDA graphics cards.

According to the company, preorders will begin shipping after all Kickstarter backer orders have been fulfilled and preorders will be shipped in order of when they were placed. Based on the monthly production schedule Pimax provided in June, this suggests preorders should start shipping no earlier than January. However, Pimax failed to meet shipping targets multiple times over the past year, so if you’re thinking about preordering we suggest keeping this in mind.

Pimax monthly production ramp-up schedule, which indicates preorders should expect their headsets in January at the earliest

For those in the dark, Pimax is a Chinese company making VR headsets with significantly higher resolution and field of view than those on the market today. In 2017, the organization launched a Kickstarter for the ‘Pimax 8K’ and ‘Pimax 5K’ headsets, each boasting a field of view of 200 degrees, and total horizontal pixel counts of 8K and 5K respectively. The Kickstarter exceeded its goal and Pimax added stretch ones like a wireless add-on and eye tracking. Pimax also hasn’t clearly communicated the hardware specifications for its various headset efforts, and the company is apparently planning controllers which resemble the earlier designs for Valve’s Knuckles.

Originally Pimax claimed that they would begin shipping to backers in January of 2018, and that they would have custom controllers based of Valve’s “Knuckles” design. This target was missed and, as of October, Pimax have now begun shipping the first headsets to their backers. They plan to have all backer headsets shipped by the end of the year.

Last month, Pimax unveiled a 3rd headset in its lineup, the “5K Plus”. This headset uses high quality native 1440p LCD panels instead of the PenTile OLED of “5K”, or lower quality LCD of the “8K.” Pimax will only be shipping the original “5K” to backers, it is not available for preorder, as the “5K Plus” replaces it. The Pimax headsets

Tensions between the United States and North Korea earlier this year had the world’s collective breath in limbo, with threats of nuclear annihilation suggesting that the nuclear apocalypse could arrive sooner than we expected. The words never evolved into anything else, but after playing Heavy Fire: Red Shadow, I think we might have been given a future even worse.

Set in a future where nuclear deterrence doesn’t exist and North Korea has begun the process of Korean reunification, Heavy Fire: Red Shadow places you in the role of Sergeant Will, a soldier whose sole objective is to man a rotating machine gun turret and annihilate any troops who stand in his way. In his sights are a constant stream of North Korean soldiers with no care or regard for their own safety, often charging blindly at the turret in the hopes of getting a few shots off before they’re torn to shreds by high-caliber ammunition.

Ludicrous as the basic premise already is, Heavy Fire: Red Shadow manages to make things even worse by the bizarre decision to include Korean “kamikaze” enemies. Though there are instances of North Korean troops launching suicide attacks during the Korean War, it was predominantly a Japanese strategy, making it seem like the game views the two as interchangeable. The right-wing overtones continue in regard to the United States’ domestic situation, as a prologue sequence explains that the country has experience crippling debt because of expanded social programs – something that is absolutely not happening.

Once you get past the exposition, you’ll find that the basic gameplay of Heavy Fire: Red Shadow is simple beyond belief. Across four different stages – the game says it’s eight, but it’s just four with options for day and night – you swivel a machine gun turret and mow down wave after wave of North Korean soldiers, boats, and ground vehicles. With a rocket launcher by your side and a handful of perks that feel similar to score-streaks in Call of Duty, you can usually weasel your way out of danger, particularly because there are very few surprises over the few hours it takes to complete the campaign. You kill the enemies on the screen, you wait a few seconds, and more show up. You repeat this process for about 15 minutes until they arbitrarily decide to stop fighting you.

I played a few of the missions in the traditional television mode before trying out the PlayStation VR mode, and the latter option changes almost nothing about the experience. Yes, you are now actually sitting in the turret and looking around at the enemies you’re shooting, but you still only use a standard DualShock 4 controller that doesn’t even rumble, and you can’t move it around to reposition the turret. Worse still, enemies occasionally will try to sneak behind the turret encampment, which means you have to turn around and face the front of your couch, which PSVR was not designed to do.

Today, Oculus released their long teased “casting” feature for Oculus Go.

Until now it has been difficult to show Go to friends and family since you can’t see what they see when wearing the headset. When demoing a tethered VR headset to friends or visitors, though, the ability to see on your TV/monitor what the person in VR sees is valuable. With Go, there isn’t a TV or monitor present so using it in the same room as others has been an isolating experience.

With the latest update for Oculus Go, you can now see a live view on your smartphone of what the person in the Go is seeing. In future, this feature will be expanded to include Chromecast, so everyone in the room can see the VR view on a TV. The feature started rolling out gradually to everyone this week, according to Oculus.

Casting was one of the top user requested features for Go, and has been anticipated for months now. Oculus CTO John Carmack first confirmed that casting was in development on Twitter all the way back in February, months before the Go headset shipped. The day after launch, Carmack once again commented on casting on Twitter, saying that he had a working demo, but that it would take a while to properly integrate into a release.

Since the Go and upcoming Oculus Quest VR gaming console run the same operating system, Oculus’ fork of Android, casting should also be present for Quest on launch. If TV casting is launched by then, it could make Quest a more social experience in living rooms and other shared spaces.

Crytek won’t be making any cutbacks to the content of its debut VR game, The Climb, as it ports it to Oculus Quest.

The Climb was one of the first games confirmed to be coming to Quest when the headset was revealed at Oculus Connect 5 last month. Unlike games like Dead and Buried and Superhot VR, though, we didn’t get a look at the game on the show floor. Crytek did send out an email about the title this week, though, and subsequently confirmed to UploadVR that the full version of the game would be included.

That means each of the mountains in the original Oculus Rift edition of the game will be included, as will the multiplayer mode that allows players to compete against others and the Tourist mode that lets you explore the game with greater ease.

We enjoyed The Climb, even in its original 2016 version that only utilized a gamepad, though Crytek greatly improved the experience with the introduction of Touch controllers later on. One of the game’s main appeals, though, was the visual fidelity afforded by the developer’s own CryEngine. In fact, The Climb remains one of the best-looking PC VR games to date, so we’re very curious to see how the visuals hold up when the game is ported down to less-powerful mobile hardware. We already saw a detailed rundown of the ways that developers can adapt Rift games to run on Quest at OC5.

Crytek declined to comment on the visuals for now but, given that Quest is set to launch in spring 2019, it won’t be too much longer before we get our first proper looks at some of these games.

I’m really bad at throwing things in VR. Like, really bad. I had a very humiliating demo at an Oculus event in 2015 where the developers of Sports Champions learned that their football mechanics weren’t as generous as they thought, and I recently held up my Escape the Lost Pyramid team trying to lob a weight into a bucket. But my worrying lack of hand-eye coordination actually paid off in Accounting+.

In the opening menu of Crows, Crows, Crows expanded surrealist take on VR, which is just a secret-laden as the rest of the game, I find a ball and a hoop. Naturally, I pick the former up and attempt to shoot. I miss, and miss, and miss. All the while a godly voice goads me into trying one more time. Upon what must be the 20th attempt, however, I receive a divine message.

“Look, I’ll just give you the trophy,” it says. “No one will know.” And an achievement pops up.

And that just about sums up the brilliance of Accounting+. Sure there’s Justin Roiland’s eccentric brand of brute force humor, but it’s a design philosophy centered around anticipating the darker desires of the player’s mind and their ability to follow through with actions that makes it more than an interactive episode of Rick and Morty.

You can think of Accounting+ as a sort of director’s cut of the original experience, though it’s absolutely worth throwing down $11.99 for if you already went through the free version. It’s an even deeper rabbit hole than it was before, packed with new levels and interactions that triple the size of the original whilst retaining its assault on both sense and sensibility. At one moment I’m being subjected to inexplicably heavy profanity from a hideous angry creature living in a tree, the next I’m in a getaway vehicle firing weaponized seeds at cops that will grow into plants and crash their cars. All the while a driver is shouting “It’s virtual reality! It doesn’t matter! You can kill anyone!”

There’s something very knowing about all of this, as if Accounting+ is some absurd precursor to the inevitable attention-grabbing VR slaughter simulators. In some respects, it’s an even dafter version of Virtual-Virtual Reality; just like Tender Claws’ intriguing experience, Crows, Crows, Crows knows what springs to mind when you pick up anything even remotely capable of causing destruction in VR. But, instead of awkwardly shying away from that disturbing fact, it makes the unavoidable result so emotionally confusing and hilarious you can’t help but laugh. Unexpected interactivity, the kind that would likely be swept under the rug in other VR games, is at the heart of Accounting+.

This is VR at its most fascinatingly awkward. As I return to the angry tree monster, I light a bomb fuse only to discover that the explosive is also sentient and just as furious. Suddenly I’ve got two voices screaming directly at me while everything’s on fire, their rushed cries gelling into an inaudible mess. It’s the virtual embodiment of this:

Gearbox’s Borderlands 2 VR won’t include the original game’s DLC when it launches for PSVR this year.

The developer confirmed as much on Twitter yesterday, reaffirming that the VR version consists of “the full core game” with the “original four Vault Hunters.” There’s no word on if the DLC packs could eventually make it to the game, but fingers crossed.

Borderlands 2 VR launches with the full core game of Borderlands 2 and the original four Vault Hunters, with the complete experience re-imagined for VR!

— Borderlands (@Borderlands) October 23, 2018

The original Borderlands 2 received 10 DLC packs following its launch, four of which added more story-based content to the game and another two introduced new playable characters.

It’s very possible that Gearbox is waiting to see how the base game performs before including any of the game’s DLC. Two weeks back the developer also noted that they wouldn’t be bringing other games in the Borderlands series to VR ‘for now’.

DLC isn’t the only thing stripped back from the Borderlands 2 VR experience. The game’s also a strictly single-player only affair, dropping the four-player co-op of the original. There’s no support for Sony’s PSVR Aim Controller, either, which seems like a perfect fit (Move and DualShock 4 controls are in, though). Still, this is a massive game with about 30 hours of content in the base campaign alone, not to mention sidequests and other features. Even if it’s stripped back, that’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Knight of Cups and Badlands director Terrence Malick is soon set to debut his second VR film.

The piece, named Evolver, will premiere as one of 10 projects at VR Days Europe in Amsterdam today, Screen Daily reports. Produced with the help of House of Secrets, the experience studies the lives of humans all the way from birth to death. Judging by the director’s most recent work, which includes breezy existential pieces like Song to Song, it’s sure to be a trip.

Perhaps most excitingly for film fans, though, the piece features music from Jonny Greenwood, the lead guitarist of Radiohead and composer of soundtracks for films like There Will Be Blood and You Were Never Really Here who was recently nominated for an Oscar for his work on Phantom Thread. Brilliantly, there’s also music from Wu-Tang Clan.

Malick’s first VR piece, Together, made the rounds at festivals like SXSW and Tribeca earlier this year. He’s easily one of the best-known and most influential directors working in VR right now alongside the likes of The Revenant’s Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Other projects being revealed at VR Days include Inside Out VR from Charlotte Bruneau and Cosmos Within Us from Tupac Martir. Films are being hosted in collaboration with the Rotterdam Film Festival. The event also includes talks from members of Unity, Beat Games and more.